October 13 2015 | From: Scoop / NewAmerican / ActivistPost / GeopoliticsIn
every sense of the term, it is a corporate seizure at the expense of a
citizen’s worth, because obviously, having extended copyright terms,
paying more for pharmaceuticals, extending the length of patents, and
attacking the generic drugs industry is exactly what the general public
need

Diplomats, trade officials and delegations of the
twelve negotiating countries behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement were always doing one thing even as their respective masters
were doing another.

Related: "The Biggest Protest This Country Has Seen In Years" - 250,000 Germans Protest Obama "Free Trade" Deal

As
the boardroom was carving out democracy and sovereignty, the executives
were selling vassalage as well worth it. As President Barack Obama,
mask off, was insisting on taking the globe, as far as it he could,
further into an American trade orbit, free trade was being sold in all
signatory countries as an automatic godsend.

“This is about increasing the ability of global corporations to source wherever they can at the lowest cost.”- Michael Wessel, The Guardian, Oct 9, 2015Secret
during the entire phase of negotiations, it has only been the workings
of WikiLeaks that has enabled global citizens to get a glimpse about
what exactly we are in for. The intellectual property chapter has now
been released in three phases, the first in November 2013, and the final
on October 9, 2015.

The
latter version, dated October 5, is the near, if not actual final
product, one which will be sold to the twelve respective parliaments
when respective ratification and domestic legislation will have to be
enacted.

In every sense of the term, it is a corporate
seizure at the expense of a citizen’s worth, because obviously, having
extended copyright terms, paying more for pharmaceuticals, extending the
length of patents, and attacking the generic drugs industry is exactly
what the general public need.

As the Electronic Frontier
Foundation noted, the IP chapter “confirms our worst fears about the
agreement, and dashes few hopes we held out that its most onerous
provisions wouldn’t survive to the end of the negotiations.”

Related: The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared (See important excerpt below)Regarding The Takedown of Alternative Media Websites Such as WakeUpKiwi;

ISP Liability:

The
provisions on ISP liability (Appendix Section I), as we previously
found in the last leaked text, are not quite as permissive as we hoped.
It will still require most countries to adopt a version of the flawed
U.S. DMCA notice-and-takedown system, albeit with a few safeguards such
as penalties for those who issue wrongful takedown notices, and allowing
(but not requiring) a Japanese-style system of verification of takedown
notices by an independent body of ISPs and rightsholders.

It
is true that Canada’s notice-and-notice regime is also allowed, but
effectively only for Canada - no other country that did not have an
equivalent system as of the date of the agreement is allowed to benefit
from that flexibility. Even in Canada’s case, this largesse is only
afforded because of the other enforcement measures that rightsholders
enjoy there - such as a tough regime of secondary liability for
authorization of copyright infringement.

Similarly Chile’s
system under which ISPs are not required to take down content without a
judicial order is explicitly grandfathered in, but no other country
joining the TPP in the future will be allowed to have a similar system.

In
addition, although there is no explicit requirement for a graduated
response regime of copyright penalties against users, ISPs are still
roped in as copyright enforcers with the vague requirement (Appendix
Section 1) that they be given “legal incentives…to cooperate with
copyright owners to deter the unauthorized storage and transmission of
copyrighted materials or, in the alternative, to take other action to
deter the unauthorized storage and transmission of copyright materials.”Coming
to the chapter with fresh eyes allows for an initially easy deception.
The language in parts is bland and general, taking cognisance of the IP
rules for the “mutual advantage of producers and users” to “facilitate
the diffusion of information”. All this, it is suggested, is to aid
access to the wonderful world of diversity that is the public domain.

The public domain, however, is evidently seen to be one heavily circumscribed by both the State and its corporate partners.

The
treaty entitles signatories to restrict information, for instance,
through trial proceedings that would be “detrimental to a party’s
economic interests, international relations, or national defence or
national security”.

Signatory states already have similar
domestic restrictions designed to curb such information mechanisms as
freedom of information.

Privacy is also shot through, be
it in instances when authorities in signatory states can provide names
and addresses of importers in violation to owners of that intellectual
property.

The
entire chain of production and use is targeted, with information
including “any person involved in any aspects of the infringement or
alleged infringement”. Third persons said to be “involved in the
production and distribution of such goods or services and of their
channels of distribution” are also netted.

As the text is
chewed further, the restrictions, notably in terms of public use, start
mounting. In fact, the public seem to be a defanged, inconsequential
presence.

Copyright, for instance, is said to be matter
for the parties to balance within their domestic regulations, but the
agreement does not bind parties to aim for that goal. There is no
mandatory fair use model provision to speak of.

As for how
long such copyright terms would run, a protection period of 70 years is
offered after performance or publication, and if not published within
25 years after creation, for 70 years after that creation. Better,
though not by much, than the absurdly lengthy 120 year period initially
proposed by the US Trade Representative.

Related: The Pacific Trade Agreement is an Attack on SovereigntyExcerpt:

In
2004, Mike Nattrass, a leader of Britain’s United Kingdom Independence
Party, thundered, “The EU was sold to the British people as a trading
agreement and turned into a political union which is changing our basic
laws and traditions.”

And in 2007, former German President
Roman Herzog lamented: “84 percent of the legal acts in Germany stemmed
from [EU headquarters in] Brussels.”

He concluded that his country should no longer be considered an independent nation.

In
2000, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former ruler of the USSR, had raised a
different type of red flag. While in Britain, he described the EU as
“the new European Soviet.”

Few took that revealing remark seriously.

It
is now 2015. Led by President Obama, the United States has agreed to
link arms in a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim nations. Labeled the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the proposal has been promoted as a
beneficial trade agreement that will enhance U.S. trade, counter China’s
exports, create jobs here at home, protect the environment, enforce
human rights, and more.

But a close examination of what is
known about this pact (no copies have been made available, other than
what has leaked out) reveals that it is far more than a mere trade pact.

Instead, it should be viewed as the beginning of a process similar to the one employed to create the European Union.

Negotiations
leading to completion of this pact have been conducted in secrecy, even
to the point of refusing to provide members of Congress with copies.
Congress is given 90 days to mull over passage or refusal but no
amendments are allowed because Congress has already given the president
authority to forbid congressional changes.

Not only that,
but TPP negotiators want to keep portions of the document secret for at
least four years even if Congress okays it. Why any member of Congress
would agree to all of this is somewhat mind-boggling.

Mr.
Obama won’t admit it, but TPP is designed to be the beginning step in a
political and economic union that will result in our doing to ourselves
precisely what has been done to 28 nations in Europe.

Members of Congress, both House and Senate, must hear from voters about this.

And
this is not just about America - the people of all 12 affected nations
need to wake up and prevent the ratification of this monstrous,
globalist, NWO machination.

If TPP isn’t rejected, a huge chunk of our collective nations' independence will have been traded away.

If asked, Gorbachev might even refer to a ratified TPP as “the new Pacific Soviet.”Reduced
then, to its barest form, only a few provisions identified by the EFF
can be deemed to be less inhibitive than what was found in initial
drafts. Extending copyright protections to “buffer” copies in a computer
system was eventually dropped by the USTR. The parallel importation of
cheaper versions of copyright works will be permitted, complemented by
an express authorisation of devices that bypass regions (EFF, Oct 9).

Leaving
aside the evident influence of Hollywood in the entire affair, the heft
of the pharmaceutical industries was also made apparent. Stifling
innovation in its name, the chapter effectively entrenches the most
anti-competitive practices of all by enforcing oligopolies with the
grace, or gracelessness, of law.

The
implications are extensive, but a few points should be noted. Patent
Term adjustments (Article QQ.E.14), extensions which delay the entry of
generic medicines while also limiting access to cheaper medicines, looms
large.

Speed is of the essence, with parties undertaking
to “make best efforts to process applications for market approval of
pharmaceutical products in an efficient and timely manner, with a view
to avoiding unreasonable and unnecessary delays.”The
state parties are given considerable leeway in terms of making
“available a period of additional sui generis protection to compensate
for unreasonable curtailment of the effective patent term as a result of
the marketing approval process.”

Stifling measures
regarding the release of generic drugs into the market is provided by
QQ.E.15, which enables parties to“adopt or maintain a regulatory review
exception for pharmaceutical products”.

In theory, this
replicates provision in states where generic drugs are permitted as
exceptions which enable them to be made in small quantities before the
patent expires. Well and good, but for the fact that any such review
must be mindful that the legitimate interests of the patent owner shall
not be unreasonably prejudiced.

Related: The TPP Chapter on Drug Patents Will Kill Drug Dependents

Excerpt:

"The
passage of the final version of the secretive TPP a few days ago will
literally kill any drug dependent today because it would raise up the
prices of even the now cheaper generic versions of an antibiotic, or
take them out of the market altogether due to intellectual property
infringement."Furthermore, market exclusivity is
granted for pharmaceutical products for “at least five years” – a means
of ensuring that generic drug registration will be delayed for a
designated period of time.

Related: Big Pharma Revealed As Puppetmaster Behind TPP Secrecy

Third
parties are not permitted to market the same or similar product using
the same or other data regarding the safety and efficacy of that
product.

Even if the parties accept applications for
generic medicines within those five years, marketing approval can only
take place after the five year period has expired.

The
insidious linking between the market, marketing approval and the patent,
gleams with nefarious consequence before the sickbed of humanity. It
will also be distressing to some US Democrats who had hoped to build
upon the May 10, 2007 deal made under the Bush administration. The “May
10 Agreement” had taken umbrage with patent term extensions and longer
marketing exclusivities.

At
this point in time, as the clock ticks over respective domestic
enactments by the 12 parliaments and congressional bodies, the political
classes within the party states will have to consider whether a
corporate dictated subservience, legally sanctioned, is better than such
alternatives where the commonwealth can prevail.